Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Philogyny #2, Vahri G. Mckenzie

Research outputs 2013

Background: The work is in traditional Shakespearean sonnet form, which has a long association with love poems, but plays with persona and voice in unexpected ways. The title plays on the philogyny/phylogeny pun with a focus on female anatomy and floral taxonomy.

Contribution: The work is included in the section named Ouroboros. Introducing this section the editor writes: The playful, silly and humorous are as much a part of love as the deeper, darker passions. This statement is repeated on the volumes' back cover and on the website to sum up the collection as a whole. Inverting Shakespeares' formula, Philogyny …

Traces Of Departure And Arrival, Lyndall Adams

Research outputs 2013

This paper traces the consequences of dislocation for studio arts-practice. I recently found myself in Perth, far from my home of 20 years and with directional vertigo, looking east to my old life and west to the Indian Ocean. In order to make sense of this move I used the studio to resolve/recollect/ trace my sense of movement, change, loss and vertigo. The multiple departures and arrivals on this journey are articulated as catalysts to studio production. We rarely speak about the spaces between such departures and arrivals and the effects those spaces have on the lived body. The space …

The Dangers In Design Thinking, Alun J. Price

Research outputs 2013

Over the past few years there has been an increased use of the term Design Thinking (DT). Organisations such as The NextDesign Leadership Institute and its related design consultancy, Humantific have been using the term in various projects such as the ‘Design Thinking Made Visible’ project (Humantific, 2011). The term Design Thinking gained popularity after the Stanford University Engineering School ran a course on it in 2005 (Christoph, Leifer & Plattner, 2011). Many of the processes used by designers adopting this approach seem to come from non-design disciplines. Much of what has been taught in management schools for many years …

Designing With Images: Using A Realism Continuum To Choose Pictures For Communication Tasks, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

Graphic design has historically been concerned with giving identity to clients’ projects. But what of its own identity? Graphic design and typography have become interchangeable terms, to the detriment of any theoretical position on pictures. This paper explains the necessity of a theory of pictures specific to the graphic design discipline. Bamford (2003) says there can’t be a vocabulary of images since it would be as limitless as the imagination and graphic skills of humanity. But a search for a vocabulary of images is a red herring for graphic design. Typography is less about what is spoken and more about …

Reflections On The Construction Of Meaning Through Immanent Visual Association, Samuel P. Gillies, Lindsay R. Vickery

Research outputs 2013

Since the advent of digital video editing and projection, multimedia presentation in the concert space is no longer exclusive to the music of stadiumsized popular music events. Increasingly, many in the field of new music are incorporating elements of mixed media presentation. Examples of this trend include performances across the spectrum of new music such as Sensorband, Nico Muhly, Leafcutter John, and more. This paper discusses the artistic and thematic accomplishments of four different approaches to audio-visual association before discussing the influences of these approaches, their incorporation or rejection, into my own work Red River. (Gillies, 2011)

Service Design 101: The Joy And Challenge Of Introducing Service Design Into An Undergraduate Design Curriculum, Christopher Kueh, Stuart Medley, Alun Price

Research outputs 2013

This paper describes the introduction of service design into a university design course that previously promoted itself as industry-based and practice-driven—but which had not necessarily kept pace with the contemporary meanings of these terms. The followings discuss the need to teach service design in Western Australia. These are being highlighted through the latest development in business community, government and NGOs that seek innovation and sustainability. Edith Cowan University Design Department therefore is committed to teach socially-focused projects (such as wayfinding; civic identity; designing out crime) connect students with the public and real clients through collaborative practice and social design workshops. …

Mobile Games With Intelligence: A Killer Application?, Philip Hingston, Clare Bates Congdon, Graham Kendall

Research outputs 2013

Mobile gaming is an arena full of innovation, with developers exploring new kinds of games, with new kinds of interaction between the mobile device, players, and the connected world that they live in and move through. The mobile gaming world is a perfect playground for AI and CI, generating a maelstrom of data for games that use adaptation, learning and smart content creation. In this paper, we explore this potential killer application for mobile intelligence. We propose combining small, light-weight AI/CI libraries with AI/CI services in the cloud for the heavy lifting. To make our ideas more concrete, we describe …

Tessitura Changes In Music Theatre Repertoire For The Soprano Voice, Linda J. Barcan

Research outputs 2013

While the term tessitura is often poorly defined and loosely applied, certain statements about its application to singers and their repertoire may be made. For vocal repertoire, tessitura refers to the prevailing note or range of notes in a vocal line. For singers, it refers to the area in which the voice is most comfortably resonant. The definition most frequently used to capture the concept in relation to both singer and repertoire is the range of pitches where a voice or song “sits”. While attempts have been made to quantify tessitura, most references to this term remain largely subjective. This …

Stories Of Snow And Fire: The Importance Of Narrative To A Critically Pluralistic Environmental Aesthetic, John C. Ryan

Research outputs 2013

Written narratives enable humans to appreciate the natural world in aesthetic terms. Firstly, narratives can galvanize for the reader a sense for another person’s experience of nature through the aesthetic representation of that experience in language. Secondly, narratives can encode and document for the human appreciator as writer an experience of nature in aesthetic terms. Through different narrative lenses, the compelling qualities of environments can be crystallized for both the reader (who vicariously experiences nature through language) and the human appreciator (who directly experiences nature through the senses). However, according to philosopher Allen Carlson’s “natural environmental model” of landscape aesthetics, …

The Psychological Benefits Of Participating In Group Singing For Members Of The General Public, Marianne D. Judd, Julie Ann Pooley

Research outputs 2013

The last decade has produced a growing number of studies examining the potential psychological benefits of singing in a choir. Studies have tended to focus on the benefits for groups that might be described as marginalized or criminal. In contrast, the current study focused on members of the general public who regularly participate in choral singing. An in-depth qualitative design was utilized to explore the meaning and importance of group singing for 10 participants. Thematic analysis based on an interpretive approach was utilized to analyse the data. Psychological benefits emerged as two themes: individual and group. A third theme, mediating …

The Hd Magazine: Graphists And Wordsmiths, Hanadi Haddad, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

HD Magazine is a cross-disciplinary initiative, seeking to bring together students from the fields of Journalism and Graphic Design (from 1st year through to 4th year). Its creation allows students to share knowledge and skills, showcase their work and contribute to establishing a sense of community within the School of Communications and Arts (SCA) at Edith Cowan University (ECU). HD Magazine is bi-annually published (four issues to date), with future stages of development including online publication and collaboration with students from interactive media development and creative writing. From a design perspective, HD Magazine is also an investigation into visual literacy, …

Design Thinking Practice And Research: Building Research Culture In Undergraduate Studies, Christopher Kueh

Research outputs 2013

The relationships between design practice and research in university education is an on-going discussion. The expansion and development of design fields such as Design Thinking has generated discussions between research and practice (see Kimbell, 2011; Sangiorgi, 2010). This sees the urge to develop strong research culture in both undergraduate and postgraduate studies. This paper presents and discusses a Design Thinking framework in cultivating research culture in undergraduate Design courses at Edith Cowan University (ECU), Western Australia.

Bridging The Gap: Scenario-Based Design As A Solution For Delayed Access To Users, Paul Haimes, Joo H. Jung, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

Scenario-based design (Carroll & Rosson, 2002) is a Human-Computer Interaction methodology for considering the needs of potential users, without their direct input. Scenario-based design gives the interface designer the ability to create scenarios of use, along with postulations on the various types of users, expressed in the form of personas (Grudin & Pruitt, 2002). These scenarios and personas can be useful in the context of a design project, where real world issues preclude the direct involvement of users at a critical stage. By ‘walking through’ informal narrative descriptions in the form of a story, scenario-based design focuses on human activity …

Skipping Against Hegemony: Where Are States Of Lightness In Contemporary Dance-Making?, Margaret J. Phillips

Research outputs 2013

Dance relies on physical ideas born out of human experience. Changes in what we “do” and “transmit” in the context of pedagogy should follow the shifting and informed perspectives of the time, reflecting scientific, sociological, and imaginative advancements and practices. One day, while a young girl skipped down a university pathway, that principle was brought into question. This innocent protagonist’s skipping provoked a search for explanations of the erasure of a complex “foundational” action from the grounds of adult knowledgeable behaviour. Could this dismissal of a physical idea bear any correspondences with a limited range of contemporary dance compositional modes …

The Western Australian New Music Archive: Finding, Accessing, Remembering And Performing A Community Of Practice, Catherine A. Hope, Lelia R. Green, Tos Mahoney

Research outputs 2013

In 2009, the music composition department at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) at Edith Cowan University (ECU) and Perth organisation Tura New Music embarked upon a project to develop and establish the Western Australian New Music Archive (WANMA), a digital repository and interface of new music by Western Australian composers from 1970 to the current day. The project seeks to discover, collect, collate, digitise, store and disseminate music recordings, video documentation, scores and other evidence surrounding Western Australian new music. WANMA is now a funded Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage research project involving collaboration between the State …

Developing Social Skills Through Music: The Impact Of General Classroom Music In An Australian Lower Socio-Economic Area Primary School, John N. Heyworth

Research outputs 2013

Ideas about the physical and psychological healing effects of music date back to the classical Greek period. There is also substantial research concerning the educative influences of music on the human mind. Developmental deficiencies among low socio-economic student populations have often been associated with a reduced sense of self-esteem, responsibility, and ability to form relationships or engage in successful communication. This article describes a pro-active, constructivist approach to music education in a school largely attended by socially and economically disadvantaged students in Australia, and explores the influence of music on social learning. The strategic use of group music lessons in …

Articulating Everyday Catastrophes: Reflections On The Research Literacies Of Lorri Neilsen, Lesley M. Hopkins

Research outputs 2013

Lorri Neilsen, whose feature article appears in this edition of M/C Journal, is Professor of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Neilsen has been teaching and researching in literacy studies for more than four decades. She is internationally recognised as a poet and as an arts-based research methodologist specialising in lyric inquiry. In the latter half of this last decade she was appointed for a five year term to be the Poet Laureate for Nova Scotia. As an academic, she has published widely under the name of Lorri Neilsen; as a poet, she uses Lorri …

Diminutive Catastrophe: Clown's Play, Margaret J. Phillips

Research outputs 2013

Clowns can be seen as enacting catastrophe with a small “c.” They are experts in “failing better” who perhaps live on the cusp of turning catastrophe into a metaphorical whirlwind while ameliorating the devastation that lies therein. They also have the propensity to succumb to the devastation, masking their own sense of the void with the gestures of play. In this paper, knowledge about clowns emerges from my experience, working with circus clowns in Circus Knie (Switzerland) and Circo Tihany (South America), observing performances and films about clowns, and reading, primarily in European fiction, of clowns in multiple guises. The …

Diversity And Equity...Community Building Strategies In Public Libraries For Multicultural Communities, Rajeswari Chelliah

Research outputs 2013

The research project focused on the community building potential in the public library due to increasing diversity in multicultural groups. Diversity in Australia and the world at large, is challenged by groups with backgrounds of traditionally embedded mind-sets, civil unrest, war, intolerance and poverty, and who live within the socio-cultural framework of the host culture. Building cohesion and integration among the residents is vital for all nations. The exploratory research project investigated the current level of public library services to Multicultural groups to obtain library staff views. The views of Multicultural individuals about their local public library experiences and information …

John Manningham At The Blackfriars Theatre, Charles Edelman

Research outputs 2013

Although it covers a mere sixteen months, from January 1602 to April 1603, the Diary of John Manningham, written when he was a twenty-five year old law student at the Middle Temple, is a rich and entertaining source of information about life in Elizabethan London, especially at the Inns of Court where he resided. Along with lengthy discussions of the sermons heard each Sunday (usually one in the morning followed by another in the afternoon), we have jokes, gossip, poems, a fascinating account of Queen Elizabeth’s last days, and many witticisms he heard and enjoyed, sometimes mentioning the source, but …

Keys From The Past: Unlocking The Power Of Eighteenth-Century Contrapuntal Pedagogies, Jonathan R. Paget, Stewart J. Smith

Research outputs 2013

How did eighteenth-century musicians learn to compose, and how were they able to produce musical works with such comparative ease and fluency? What were the strategies at play that enabled even the most workman-like of composers to produce vast amounts of competent music, and how was it possible for almost any professional keyboard player to improvise a passable fugue? It is only recently that scholars have sought the answers to such questions. Groundbreaking work by Gjerdigen (1988; 2007a), Porter (2000; 2002), Renwick (1995), and others, provides a fascinating glimpse of the working methods of eighteenth-century musicians, and also offers implications …

Retaining A Sense Of Spontaneity In Free Jazz Improvisation Through Music Technology, Suzanne Kosowitz, Lindsay R. Vickery

Research outputs 2013

The Free Jazz genre has many interpretations and takes different forms from one musician to another, which makes it difficult to define as a single entity. This paper focuses on the style pioneered by Ornette Coleman (b.1930) as his form is probably most well known. Whilst his could be considered one of the most spontaneous Jazz styles in terms of its improvisational language, it does come with its limitations. His Free Jazz improvisations whilst created in the moment, are not truly spontaneous as Coleman still relies heavily on the idiomatic Bebop ensemble culture, melodic language and formal structures in his …

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Votes: Graphicacy Skills For Political Debate, Amanda Rainey, Stuart Medley

Research outputs 2013

Political campaigns are greatly influenced by changes in technology and communication, from FDR’s ‘Fireside Chats’ to JFK’s embrace of television. Now a combination of technologies allows almost everyone to create, reproduce, transform, and share images with friends and family, or with the world. Individuals and grassroots organisations can communicate using images alongside mainstream media, corporations and governments. There is now a great need for all of us to develop the visual literacy – or graphicacy – required to interpret and recreate images, to communicate as educated equals in this new political environment. Political advertising can use graphic design to make …

Creative River Journeys: Using Reflective Practice Within A Practice-Led Research Context, Kylie J. Stevenson, Susan Girak

Research outputs 2013

The past two years have seen Kylie Stevenson deeply immersed in designing and enacting a PhD research project, Creative River Journeys. The project involves her working with a group of nine artist-researchers who, like Kylie, are also completing their PhDs (or research Masters) at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, and for whom creative practice is a key component of their projects, some identifying as practice led researchers and others not. The co-author of this paper, Sue Girak, is one of those artist-researcher participants. Prior to engaging in the Creative River Journey project, Sue had elected to use the methodology a/r/tography …